


the art of surviving (and thriving)

by liminal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Other, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:43:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Never trust a survivor,” my father used to warn me, “until you find out what he did to stay alive.” </i>(Kurt Vonnegut)</p><p>Ordinary is perfect.</p><p>Petunia wonders if whether her survival is in fact the most extraordinary thing of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the art of surviving (and thriving)

It is well known within medical circles that a baby’s weight at birth correlates with its cognitive development, and that socioeconomics remain an important influence on a growing child. A paediatrician with sufficiently thorough medical notes and a rough understanding of the Evans family’s situation might therefore come to what would be a perfectly natural conclusion. Petunia Kathleen Evans was no Einstein, no Mozart and destined for nothing more complicated than a 9-5 office job, a frequently absent husband and a modest 2-up-2-down house. 

There was simply very little in Petunia’s genetic cocktail to suggest a life of drama or adventure, born as she was in 1958 in an industrial midlands town, at average weight and height and with a relatively full head of dark blonde hair. Her parents were loving, but of no exceptional wealth or talent. Her first name aside, for every other girl in her school year was a Cheryl or a Nancy or a Linda, there was nothing to make Petunia stand out. A slightly cynical paediatrician would say she was ordinary by birth and environment, and that was the way of the world. 

Undoubtedly, the same paediatrician would make the same assessment of Lily Marie Evans, born two years later, and seemingly with only a shock of auburn hair and curiously green eyes to recommend her over her sister. Such colouring caused only a little consternation amongst the family. No one in three generations on either side had been a redhead and both Evans parents were blue-eyed like their eldest daughter. Mr Evans, though, consoled himself on the grounds that his eyes appeared hazel in some light and Lily undoubtedly had his cheeky grin. 

Yet this anonymous paediatrician could never in a million years have accounted for the presence of magic in Lily Evans or the consequences its emergence would have on the family. Of the two girls born in Cokeworth at the turn of the decade, one was dead at 21 and the other living a comfortable, middle-class suburban life. The latter was not Lily, with her flaming hair and lively mind.

Petunia Evans is ordinary, not by birth or environment, but by choice. 

-

Of all the towns in England, Cokeworth was perhaps the least likely to foster latent magical talent, but undoubtedly more likely to inspire a move to middle-class suburbia. It certainly cannot be said that there was ‘something in the air’ in Cokeworth to inspire magic, unless that ‘something’ was soot and the ‘magic’ a talent for removing air pollution. But Cokeworth, however it happened, did inspire magic: a propensity for Charms and understanding in Lily, and something grittier in Petunia.

Survival. Evolution. The ability to thrive.

Hatred and prejudice are, after all, learned, and Petunia hates only after she has learned. It isn’t her sister’s uncomplicated beauty that she hates, though it would have been easy to become disgruntled as Lily grows lean and she grows bird-like. She does not hate the sleight of hand tricks that come so easily to Lily and so delight their father; and while she begrudges the companionship that her sister increasingly finds in that Snape boy and not in her, she doesn't (at least initially) hate Lily for it.

Petunia learns to hate in a Biology lesson, when Mr Mason lectures on genes and alleles and DNA, and suddenly she loathes and detests and hates hates hates her sister. Because Lily’s letter was down to sheer luck, and all Mr Mason did was confirm what the Headmaster had said when he wrote back to her. It was sheer dumb luck that Lily could make flower heads open and close in her palm, that Lily could see other worlds, that Lily could escape the hellhole of a town that was Petunia’s entire world. Sheer dumb luck that Lily had some genetic mutation or aberration that gave her a free pass out, gave her some other option besides working in the factory and getting Friday night dinner from the chip shop. Sheer dumb luck, and Lily was abandoning her to this wretched fate. 

Petunia walks away from that lesson, walks away from some mystical magical imaginary platform at King’s Cross Station, walks away from the sister who left her behind, walks away with some magic of her own. It’s nothing that could be learned from a book or channelled through a wand. It’s burning bridges and stomping through the ashes; whether it’s drive or determination or desperation, it’s the decision to let nothing, ever again, rest on luck. It’s something earthy and powerful that won’t show up in a paediatrician’s notes or any socioeconomic evaluation. 

-

She has no knowledge of and no interest in a remote school in Scotland. Frankly, Scotland isn’t far enough away and the holidays come around with an alarming alacrity. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then Petunia’s intentions are extraordinary; she’s already in Hell and the only road she’s taking is the one out. 

She thinks that if magic, so extraordinary and bizarre and nothing that should belong in Cokeworth, can make her parents pay attention, then she’ll have to become extraordinary in her own way. And surely there’s something magical about a girl pushing herself to extremes, writing essays long into the night and revising geometry when the other girls are trying out makeup and being cat-called at the bus stop? 

But Pythagoras’ theorem never marked anyone out as special when someone else is turning animals into crystal water goblets. And when Petunia's report cards fail to yield anything more than a tight hug from a father who never stopped loving her for who she was, Petunia learns that the extraordinary will always trump the ordinary in a town as menial as Cokeworth.

Ordinary is a place far away from Cokeworth and if it takes something extraordinary to get there, then Petunia swears she’ll become truly, really extraordinary for the very first and very last time.

-

They taunt her relentlessly: the girls in school who have it lucky to be born without pinched features, the neighbours who see nothing wrong with marrying a local boy and settling down to a life of secret alcoholism and open abuse. Because secretarial school, no matter what the rest of the country may think, isn’t ordinary; because elocution lessons are unnecessary; because what is strange and unusual is always picked out and picked on. 

But Petunia learns the art of appearing ordinary. She sees the other girls, the popular ones, sees how they coo and preen and make sure everything is just to their liking; sees the teachers heap praise on some students and bypass the rest; sees her mother make sure there’s a hot meal ready for when her father comes home from work. She learns to adapt and to keep things quiet, and when talk of her going off to secretarial school dies down, she welcomes the inane chatter that replaces it: the talk of the latest teenage mother and deadbeat teenage father, rumours about Mrs 45’s affair with Mr 32.

It’s only when Lily reappears for a few weeks, when jars of frogspawn are displayed near bedroom windows and spellbooks left open for the world to see, that ‘ordinary’ suffers at first. But it’s in this pressure cooker that Petunia is formed and perfected, and the survivor emerges triumphant from beneath the carnage of her world. Mr and Mrs Evans coo over an unemployable teenage witch with flaming hair and a cocky boyfriend; Lily Evans, who has never really fitted in, stops trying; and Petunia Evans moves out. 

For one last fleeting week in Cokeworth, she is oh-so extraordinary, the talk of the town. But soon enough they go back to the factories and the soot and the greasy chips, and Petunia’s bid to become ordinary is forgotten, the way it was meant to be.

-

Surrey is a world away, sprawling and anonymous, and Petunia Evans is thoroughly ordinary by its standards. Here, even her name doesn’t raise eyebrows: there are too many Clarissas and Emilias for a flowery name to stand out. Lawns are carefully manicured, cars not-so-subtly compared, and business cards are full of corporate jargon. Petunia finds her ordinary.

Secretarial school is in an unremarkable building painted in neutral colours, full of average girls looking for a leg-up in life. Looking for something extraordinary to happen to them and never guessing that for Petunia, being in that non-descript room for hours on end is the ordinary she sought so dearly.

Then it’s the Christmas party at the office she temps at and when Vernon Dursley, already on the larger size and sure of his own self-importance, asks her to dance, Petunia sees her ordinary substantiated. He’s not Lily's good-looking black-haired boyfriend, but he’s ordinary in every sense of the word. 

(Even slightly below average if Petunia is honest with herself.)

And he’s perfect.

-

She knows what ordinary expects, has known since the age of thirteen when a stern looking woman appeared on her family’s doorstep with a letter in her hand and asking for Lily. Ordinary expects her to acquiesce, to laud her husband and not put up a fight, to keep a tight house and keep an eye on her neighbours. Ordinary expects a mown lawn, a big company car and the odd French recipe with enough small errors to allow the assembled dinner guests to lambast fancy cooking. Ordinary expects a cherished child, who will in turn be ordinary himself. Ordinary expects nothing to make Mrs 28 raise an eyebrow, or Mr Behind-the-Hedge stop for a quick chat. Ordinary expects everything Petunia has been working towards since Cokeworth, and ordinary is perfect.

-

Cokeworth proves itself the making of the Evanses, two young girls with flowery names in a dank, dirty town, who rise through the smog and limitations, flourishing like their namesakes. 

History remembers one girl with the maiden name of Evans, one girl who all agree was extraordinary. Petunia, knowing that her sister continues to outshine her even in death, wonders if whether her survival is in fact the most extraordinary thing of all.


End file.
